Ticket Deflection: When Words are Unnecessary
Encourage customers to find solutions to their issues without the assistance of human agents, reduce the number of tickets, and let your support team do their job better.
In an era where DoorDash promises “all of your retail needs delivered in as fast as one hour,” for most of the consumers, “quick” has become an equivalent of “quality”. I say “for most of the consumers” because we all have that one aunt who vehemently resists using online delivery services, don’t we?
Even research shows that customers are 2.4 times more likely to stick with a brand when their problems are solved quickly. Yet many companies, especially small businesses with limited resources, struggle to deliver a quick customer service and support.
One of the ways to speed up support processes is ticket deflection.
What is ticket deflection?
Ticket deflection is an approach in customer support, where customers are encouraged to find solutions to their product questions and/or complaints independently through self-service resources. Independently here mainly means without assistance of a human support agent, without creating new support tickets.
Ticket deflection is a critical strategy for reducing the burden on customer support teams AND reducing the time between ticket submission and ticket resolution. Relaxed teams=better customer experience.
Are you looking for a solution for your IT support? Check out Alloy Navigator—our ITSM & ITAM product. The key capability for ticket deflection within Alloy Navigator is the Self-Service Portal.
- Our self-service portals are incredibly easy to configure and customize
- Alloy Navigator-based SSPs include a knowledge base, a service catalog, and a form to submit technical issues
- The interface of the SSP is translated to more than 30 languages, and after the release of our newest version in November 2024, your users will be able to seamlessly translate any message from an agent or an employee
Connect to our sales team if you want to find it out for yourself!
Use cases and benefits of ticket deflection
Let’s shortly go through the key use cases where lower ticket volume is critical for sustaining the business:
Ticket deflection as part of a disaster plan
Imagine a huge incident happening, such as a vulnerability discovered in an application used by thousands of customers. The support team will hardly survive if all those thousands start calling and texting them demanding urgent patching of their versions. But no business owner can afford keeping an army of customer support agents “just in case” one day such an outage occurs. To prevent an overload of their teams, companies publish detailed instructions on how to patch the vulnerability on your own. This way, even a small team can be cost effective for serving thousands of customers.
Below is an example of a security update website post, explaining the details of a vulnerability, and giving the needed links for customers to find out how to patch on their own. The main goal of compiling such an article is to reduce the number of requests from customers and equip customers with self-help remediation resources.
Ticket deflection for scaling customer support
Growing businesses often experience an increase in support requests that can quickly overwhelm their teams. Ticket deflection reduces the number of routine inquiries that reach agents, enabling startups and scaleups to reduce the burden on their human agents, thus avoiding additional hiring costs.
Imagine you’ve launched an instant delivery app in a new region. You got the marketing right, and the app users started flowing. How do you ensure no UX bug gets in the way of your users making their orders?
Creating a knowledge base (also dabbed help center, or FAQ) with the most frequent problems and workarounds for them can be an amazing solution. Your promo voucher is not accepted? Your credit card does not go through?Check out what the possible reasons might be.
Reducing onboarding queries through ticket deflection
For software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, customer onboarding often brings a flood of questions from new users on setup, account management, and feature usage. Relying on the ticket deflection tactic, the SaaS provider develops a detailed knowledge base with step-by-step setup guides, video tutorials, and troubleshooting articles.
An example of a detailed knowledge base covering all setup-related questions is Expandi. Every step from launching your paid subscription through creating an outreach campaign is documented, so there’s simply no need to talk to support.
The ticket deflection approach might become problematic when one of your clients happens to be that very aunt who just resists any non-human interaction and needs to discuss every issue with support on the phone. But that’s a completely another story…
Let’s take a closer look at how organizations can create ecosystems that address these challenges, ensuring a smoother, more scalable support experience.
Core components of an effective ticket deflection strategy
Below are the foundational components of a successful ticket deflection strategy, each playing a vital role in guiding users towards self-help solutions.
Knowledge base
The core of the knowledge management process is the knowledge base–a structured, logical, shareable, and renewable database.
In IT service management, knowledge management becomes especially significant because storing valuable knowledge helps prevent new incidents and reduce the workload of the IT team.
A knowledge base is often the first point of contact for customers seeking answers on their own.
Using dedicated tools to build a knowledge base can help significantly. In Alloy Navigator, the knowledge base is a part of our core offering. While our solution is primarily targeted at solving broader IT service management problems, such as building support workflows, automating ticket resolution, etc. But our users genuinely love our knowledge base. It often becomes their first-ever method to store internal company knowledge.
“It’s great to have a system of storing information to share among engineers, in a format that suits them. Of course you can find all answers on the internet, but the knowledge base allows us to have custom instructions, based on our specific workflows and jargon,” shared one of our customers.
Here’s what goes into building a knowledge base that customers will actually use:
- Logical structure and searchability: A knowledge base should be intuitive, with categories and subcategories that help users find information quickly. All articles should be indexed and searchable.
- Consistent updates: As products and services evolve, so should the knowledge base. Regularly updating content to reflect new features or changes is crucial.
Service catalog
A service catalog is a centralized listing of all services the IT team offers to end-users. This catalog provides an organized view of available services, along with descriptions, pricing, expected delivery times, and any necessary prerequisites for accessing these services.
In many cases, the service catalog also includes service request forms and contact information, allowing users to quickly and easily initiate requests.
Moreover, some IT teams configure backend workflows to deliver services listed in the service catalog automatically. These might be the services that don’t require human input, e.g. password request or vacation approval.
Community forums
Community forums add an extra layer of support by enabling users to help each other or find answers to common questions. This peer-to-peer support not only helps deflect tickets by empowering users to solve problems independently but also fosters a sense of community and loyalty. Customers who engage in forums are often more invested in the brand.
FAQ sections, product documentation, and help centers
A well-structured FAQ (frequently asked questions) page can be a valuable self-service resource, directing users to relevant sections of the knowledge base or providing immediate answers to common concerns.
FAQ pages only give a short overview of the answers to the most common questions, and might include links to other resources where 1-2 sentences aren’t enough to help.
Compared to FAQ pages, documentation portals and help centres usually provide more detailed answers, with all the needed instructions even if they’re lengthy.
The role of advanced AI in enhancing ticket deflection
Advanced AI capabilities are transforming ticket deflection by allowing for highly personalized and adaptive customer interactions.
- AI chatbots are incredibly powerful in filtering out customer queries and routing part of the funnel to the knowledge base
- AI-powered analytics can identify frequently visited knowledge base articles, common chatbot queries, and suggest these to the visitor before a question is asked
Measuring success in ticket deflection
Implementing a ticket deflection strategy is only the first step in streamlining and improving customer support. Understanding its impact is essential for continuous improvement. Tracking the right KPIs can reveal which self-service resources are working well and which might need adjustment. Alloy Software’s analytics tools provide businesses with a detailed view of various KPIs, offering data-driven insights to help refine ticket deflection strategies over time.
Several metrics can be monitored to determine success. For instance, the deflection rate measures the percentage of inquiries resolved without requiring agent intervention. A high deflection rate indicates that customers are successfully finding solutions through self-service channels, suggesting the strategy’s effectiveness.
Self-service engagement is another KPI worth measuring. It tracks how often users interact with knowledge base articles, chatbots, or forums before contacting support. High engagement rates reflect customer interest and satisfaction with self-service options, while low engagement may indicate usability issues or content gaps.
Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) provide insight into how customers feel about their self-service interactions. These scores can be measured through feedback forms, ratings, and comments left across various channels. Positive scores indicate that users are satisfied with the available resources, while lower scores may highlight areas needing improvement.
Best practices for implementing ticket deflection
By following the below-mentioned practices, businesses can maintain a dynamic, responsive ticket deflection system that adapts to evolving customer expectations and supports long-term efficiency:
Map the customer journey for targeted support. Identify common friction points in the customer journey and proactively embed self-service resources where users need them most. Strategically placing knowledge base links and chatbot prompts guides users toward solutions before issues escalate.
Ensure smart search and suggestions. A strong self-service experience relies on intelligent search functionality. Ideally, the knowledge base provides search and auto-suggest capabilities, surfacing any already existing knowledge base articles when the user is entering information about a similar issue.
In Alloy Navigator Self-Service portal, when a user is entering the summary of a new issue, the form suggests knowledge base articles based on the keywords.
Incorporate user feedback to improve self-service. Allow users to rate articles or report outdated information, helping identify gaps and refine resources. Alloy’s analytics tools can reveal trends in customer feedback, enabling targeted improvements that align with user needs.
Promote self-service options in customer communications. Proactively encourage customers to use self-service channels by highlighting popular resources in emails or newsletters. Showcasing the speed and convenience of self-service helps customers recognize its value, increasing engagement with these tools.
Key takeaways
Ticket deflection is a strategy in customer support that encourages customers to find answers to their questions through self-service resources—like knowledge bases, FAQs, and chatbots—rather than relying on human agents, reducing support team workload and improving response times.
To make ticket deflection work for you, develop a knowledge base, FAQs, community forums. Keep these resources organized, regularly updated, and easily searchable to maximize effectiveness.
AI capabilities like predictive support, personalized chatbot interactions, and analytics can be of huge help.
Track KPIs such as deflection rate, self-service engagement, and CSAT scores to gauge the impact of ticket deflection. Collect and act on user feedback to continuously refine self-service resources, ensuring they stay relevant and effective.
